The present invention relates to phone systems, and in particular relates to phone systems capable of providing caller information.
In recent years, work has been done to integrate phone systems with personal computers. Specifically, personal computers have recently been used to display and log caller identification (caller ID) information transmitted by the phone company""s central office.
Although such caller id information is useful, the user is not always in front of their computer""s display when a call arrives. In particular, if the user has a cordless phone, they may be some distance from their computer when they receive a call. Thus, in some instances, the user is not able to take advantage of the caller id information sent over the phone lines.
One possible solution is to provide an audio announcement of the caller""s name. However, there are several difficulties with providing such audio announcements. In particular, any such announcements must be coordinated with the embedded ringing function found in cordless phone base stations and handsets so that the user will always receive some indication of an incoming call but will not be given an annoying or undesirable combination of audio signals.
A method and apparatus are provided that receive a caller identification packet from a central office. The caller identification packet is decoded to produce caller identification information, which is used to identify an audio message. Before presenting the audio message to the user, the method and apparatus disables ringing of the phone system. After the audio message has been presented to the user, ringing is re-enabled.